Abstract
Pressure measurement under harsh environments, especially at high temperatures, is of great interest to many industries. The applicability of current pressure sensing technologies in extreme environments is limited by the embedded electronics which cannot survive beyond 300 °C ambient temperature as of today. In this paper, a pressure signal processing and wireless transmission module based on the cutting-edge Silicon Carbide (SiC) devices is designed and developed, for a commercial piezoresistive MEMS pressure sensor from Kulite Semiconductor Products, Inc. Equipped with this advanced high-temperature SiC electronics, not only the sensor head, but the entire pressure sensor suite is capable of operating at 450 °C. The addition of wireless functionality also makes the pressure sensor more flexible in harsh environments by eliminating the costly and fragile cable connections. The proposed approach was verified through prototype fabrication and high temperature bench testing from room temperature up to 450 °C. This novel high-temperature pressure sensing technology can be applied in real-time health monitoring of many systems involving harsh environments, such as military and commercial turbine engines.
Highlights
Pressure measurement has been one of the primary measurements of interest to engineers and scientists for centuries, since Evangelista Torricelli used a tube of mercury to measure the pressure of air in 1643 [1]
Nowadays there are many types of pressure sensing technologies for different applications, such as capacitive pressure sensors that utilize a diaphragm and a pressure cavity to create a variable capacitance [10,11,12,13]; piezoelectric pressure sensors that utilize the piezoelectric effect in some materials to measure the strain caused by pressure [14,15,16,17,18]; surface acoustic wave (SAW) pressure sensors that utilize the phase velocity variation of surface acoustic wave on piezoelectric substrate when pressure is applied [19,20,21,22,23]; optical pressure sensors in which the characteristics of optical signal such as intensity, polarization, phase or spectrum are modulated by the pressure stimulus [24,25,26,27,28,29]; and the most commonly used piezoresistive pressure sensors, for which the resistance of the piezoresistive material can be altered by the pressure applied on it [30,31,32,33,34]
A high-temperature Silicon Carbide (SiC) signal conditioning and wireless transmission module is designed, developed and successful demonstrated of its functionality from 25 °C to 450 °C, in conjunction with a commercial piezoresistive micro-electromechanical system (MEMS) pressure sensing element
Summary
Pressure measurement has been one of the primary measurements of interest to engineers and scientists for centuries, since Evangelista Torricelli used a tube of mercury to measure the pressure of air in 1643 [1]. SAW pressure sensors that are capable of operating in high temperatures up to 800 °C have been reported [48] By integrating a SiC high-temperature wireless signal processing and transmission module with the MEMS pressure sensing element, the sensor head, but the entire pressure sensor is capable of operating at extreme temperature of 450 °C. The embedded extreme temperature SiC electronics eliminates the need for heavy and costly wire harness and cabling, and yields a highly-integrated and miniaturized sensing system that, along with its wireless functionality, will make it possible to embed such sensing system into complex high-temperature systems (such as turbine engines) without major structural modification.
Sign-in/Register to view highlights & summary Sign-in/Register to access full text options 
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a callDisclaimer: All third-party content on this website/platform is and will remain the property of their respective owners and is provided on "as is" basis without any warranties, express or implied. Use of third-party content does not indicate any affiliation, sponsorship with or endorsement by them. Any references to third-party content is to identify the corresponding services and shall be considered fair use under The CopyrightLaw.
